I looked at the woman. She was a handsome brunette in her early thirties. Her print house dress didn’t seem to belong with her finely arched eyebrows and her long soft hands.
«How did it happen?» I asked casually, as if it didn’t matter very much.
Her voice snapped at me, as if she was aching to turn it loose. «We’ve been in the house about a week. Rented it furnished, I was in the kitchen, Jerry in the yard. The car stopped out front and the little guy marched in just as if he lived here. The door didn’t happen to be locked, I guess. I opened the swing door a crack and saw him pushing the dog into the closet. Then I smelled the chloroform. Then things began to happen all at once and I went for a gun and called Jerry out of the window. I got back in here about the time you crashed in. Who are you?»
«It was all over then?» I said. «He had Sharp chewed up on the floor?»
«Yes — if Sharp is his name.»
«You and Jerry didn’t know him?»
«Never saw him before. Or the dog. But Jerry loves dogs.»
«Better change a little of that,» I said. «Jerry knew the dog’s name. Voss.»
Her eyes got tight and her mouth got stubborn. «I think you must be mistaken,» she said in a sultry voice. «I asked you who you were, mister.»
«Who’s Jerry?» I asked. «I’ve seen him somewhere. Maybe on a reader. Where’d he get the sawed-off? You going to let the cops see that?»
She bit her lip, then stood up suddenly, went towards the fallen shotgun. I let her pick it up, saw she kept her hand away from the triggers. She went back to the window seat and pushed it under the pile of newspapers.
She faced me. «Okay, what’s the pay-off?» she asked grimly.
I said slowly: «The dog is stolen. His owner, a girl, happens to be missing. I’m hired to find her. The people Sharp said he got the dog from sounded like you and Jerry. Their name was Voss. They moved East. Ever heard of a lady called Isobel Snare?»
The woman said «No,» tonelessly, and stared at the end of my chin.
The man in overalls came back through the swing door wiping his face on the sleeve of his blue work shirt. He didn’t have any fresh guns with him. He looked me over without much concern.
I said: «I could do you a lot of good with the law, if you had any ideas about this Snare girl.»
The woman stared at me, curled her lips. The man smiled, rather softly, as if he held all the cards. Tires squealed, taking a distant corner in a hurry.
«Aw, loosen up,» I said quickly. «Sharp was scared. He brought the dog back to where he got him. He must have thought the house was empty. The chloroform idea wasn’t so good, but the little guy was all rattled.»
They didn’t make a sound, either of them. They just stared at me.
«Okay,» I said, and stepped over to the corner of the room. «I think you’re a couple of lamsters. If whoever’s coming isn’t law, I’ll start shooting. Don’t ever think I won’t.»
The woman said very calmly: «Suit yourself, kibitzer.» Then a car rushed along the block and ground to a harsh stop before the house. I sneaked a quick glance out, saw the red spotlight on the windshield, the P.D. on the side. Two big bruisers in plain clothes tumbled out and slammed through the gate, up the steps.
A fist pounded the door. «It’s open,» I shouted.
The door swung wide and the two dicks charged in, with drawn guns.
They stopped dead, stared at what lay on the floor. Their guns jerked at Jerry and me. The one who covered me was a big red-faced man in a baggy gray suit.
«Reach — and reach empty!» he yelled in a large tough voice.
I reached, but held on to my Luger. «Easy,» I said. «A dog killed him, not a gun. I’m a private dick from San Angelo. I’m on a case here.»
«Yeah?» He closed in on me heavily, bored his gun into my stomach. «Maybe so, bud. We’ll know all that later on.»
He reached up and jerked my gun loose from my hand, sniffed at it, leaning his gun into me.
«Fired, huh? Sweet! Turn around.»
«Listen —»
«Turn around, bud.»
I turned slowly. Even as I turned he was dropping his gun into a side pocket and reaching for his hip.
That should have warned me, but it didn’t. I may have heard the swish of the blackjack. Certainly I must have felt it. There was a sudden pool of darkness at my feet. I dived into it and dropped… and dropped… and dropped.
FOUR
When I came to the room was full of smoke. The smoke hung in the air, in thin lines straight up and down, like a bead curtain. Two windows seemed to be open in an end wall, but the smoke didn’t move. I had never seen the room before.
I lay a little while thinking, then I opened my mouth and yelled: «Fire!» at the top of my lungs.
Then I fell back on the bed and started laughing. I didn’t like the sound I made laughing. It had a goofy ring, even to me.
Steps ran along somewhere and a key turned in the door and the door opened. A man in a short white coat looked in at me, hard-eyed. I turned my head a little and said: «Don’t count that one, Jack. It slipped out.»
He scowled sharply. He had a hard small face, beady eyes. I didn’t know him.
«Maybe you want some more strait jacket,» he sneered.
«I’m fine, Jack,» I said. «Just fine, I’m going to have me a short nap now.»
«Better be just that,» he snarled.
The door shut, the key turned, the steps went away.
I lay still and looked at the smoke. I knew now that there wasn’t any smoke there really. It must have been night because a porcelain bowl hanging from the ceiling on three chains had light behind it. It had little colored lumps around the edge, orange and blue alternating. While I watched them they opened like tiny portholes and heads stuck out of them, tiny heads like the heads on dolls, but alive heads. There was a man in a yachting cap and a large fluffy blonde and a thin man with a crooked bow tie who kept saying: «Would you like your steak rare or medium, sir?»
I took hold of the corner of the rough sheet and wiped the sweat off my face. I sat up, put my feet down on the floor. They were bare. I was wearing canton flannel pajamas. There was no feeling in my feet when I put them down. After a while they began to tingle and then got full of pins and needles.
Then I could feel the floor. I took hold of the side of the bed and stood up and walked.
A voice that was probably my own was saying to me: «You have the D.T.s… you have the D.T.s… you have the D.T.s…»
I saw a bottle of whisky on a small white table between the two windows. I started towards it. It was a Johnnie Walker bottle, half full. I got it up, took a long drink from the neck. I put the bottle down again.
The whisky had a funny taste. While I was realizing that it had a funny taste I saw a washbowl in the corner. I just made it to the washbowl before I vomited.
I got back to the bed and lay there, The vomiting had made me very weak, but the room seemed a little more real, a little less fantastic. I could see bars on the two windows, a heavy wooden chair, no other furniture but the white table with the doped whisky on it. There was a closet door, shut, probably locked.
The bed was a hospital bed and there were two leather straps attached to the sides, about where a man’s wrists would be. I knew I was in some kind of prison ward.
My left arm suddenly began to feel sore. I rolled up the loose sleeve, looked at half a dozen pinpricks on the upper arm, and a black and blue circle around each one.
I had been shot so full of dope to keep me quiet that I was having the French fits coming out of it. That accounted for the smoke and the little heads on the ceiling light. The doped whisky was probably part of somebody else’s cure.